Tag: performance art


Kooi
Lydia Schouten, 1978, 17’41’’

For this live performance, Schouten has shut herself in an iron cage of about two by two metres. Coloured crayons and chalks are attached to the bars of the cage, at equal distances from each other. Schouten is dressed in a tight-fitting white ballet outfit, which she rubs against the bars to colour herself.
In the documentary De vernietiging van het valse vrouwbeeld/The destruction of the false female image (1978), Schouten tells us that she used the performance Cage to make a comparison with those women who, at that time, were stuck inside their homes, spending all their time running their households and looking after husband and children. It was not that they did not want to get out into the outside world, but they did not know how. When they eventually vetured out, female participation in a male-dominated society turned out to be impossible. Bearing this in mind, we see how the performance runs parallel to the experience of these women.
Initially Schouten moves about the cage in a composed and self-conscious manner. Her movements are elegant and controlled. This refers to the women who were content with their role in the home, because that was all they knew. During the course of time, woman began to feel more and more closed in and stifled by their four walls, while at the same time there was growing excitement about the idea of getting out. They were literally and figuratively preparing to start exploring the outside world. At this stage, Schouten is moving faster and more wildly about the cage, looking for a way to escape. Meanwhile, the colours are spreading over her clothing and body. After the fiasco, the frustrations strike home. The women have found out for themselves that home was the only place for them. The question of whether this will ever change causes a panic. After running around the cage like a desperate maniac, Schouten collapses in the middle of the cage, totally disillusioned.
(Esther Kunkels)

Letícia Parente, Tarefa I , video, 1982 

“Parente, dressed in white, mounts an ironing board, flattening herself against it. Another woman stands beside her, wielding an iron. The woman proceeds to run the iron across Parente, seeming to iron the artist’s blouse and pants while she wears them. While Marca Registrada is the more famous of Parente’s video artworks, Tarefa I is more sophisticated. The viewer can only guess whether or not the experience is painful: whether or not the iron is actually hot remains unknown. Also, the victim/perpetrator dichotomy becomes even more ambiguous despite the material split between the two. While the woman holding the iron is, upon observation, the perpetrator, the victim courts violence by willingly climbing onto the ironing board. Like an automaton, she submits to the iron’s threat. As it moves across her, she remains very still, balancing her body, keeping still so as to avoid being tortured by a burn. This dance between perpetrator and victim, which is at times a dance with oneself, is rendered through exquisite yet plain visual metaphors.”

—Myriam Gurber